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The University of Oxford is a collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the world's second-oldest university in continuous operation. It grew rapidly from 1167, when Henry II banned English students from attending the University of Paris. After disputes between students and Oxford townsfolk in 1209, some academics fled north-east to Cambridge where they established what became the University of Cambridge. The two English ancient universities share many common features and are jointly referred to as Oxbridge.

The University of Oxford is made up of thirty-nine semi-autonomous constituent colleges, four permanent private halls, and a range of academic departments which are organised into four divisions. Each college is a self-governing institution within the university, controlling its own membership and having its own internal structure and activities. All students are members of a college.

It does not have a main campus, but its buildings and facilities are scattered throughout the city centre. Undergraduate teaching at Oxford consists of lectures, small-group tutorials at the colleges and halls, seminars, laboratory work and occasionally further tutorials provided by the central university faculties and departments. Postgraduate teaching is provided in a predominantly centralised fashion.

Oxford operates the Ashmolean Museum, the world's oldest university museum; Oxford University Press, the largest university press in the world; and the largest academic library system nationwide. In the fiscal year ending 31 July 2023, the university had a total consolidated income of £2.92 billion, of which £789 million was from research grants and contracts.

Oxford has educated a wide range of notable alumni, including 30 prime ministers of the United Kingdom and many heads of state and government around the world. 73 Nobel Prize laureates, 4 Fields Medalists, and 6 Turing Award winners have matriculated, worked, or held visiting fellowships at the University of Oxford, while its alumni have won 160 Olympic medals. Oxford is the home of numerous scholarships, including the Rhodes Scholarship, one of the oldest international graduate scholarship programmes. (Full article...)

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The position of Laudian Professor of Arabic was established at Oxford in 1636 by William Laud (pictured), who at the time was Chancellor of the University of Oxford and Archbishop of Canterbury. The first professor was Edward Pococke, who was working as a chaplain in Aleppo in what is now Syria when Laud asked him to return to Oxford to take up the position. Laud's university regulations provided that the professor's lectures were to be attended by all medical students and bachelors of arts at the university, although this seems not to have happened since Pococke had few students. In 1881, a university statute provided that the professor was to lecture in "the Arabic, Syriac, and Chaldee Languages", and attached the professorship to a fellowship at St John's College. Successive professors had few students until after the Second World War, when numbers increased because of the reputation of Sir Hamilton Gibb and because some British students became interested in Arabic culture while serving in the Middle East during the war. Julia Bray, the Laudian Professor as of 2015, was appointed in 2012 and is the first woman to hold the position. (Full article...)

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Robert Madgwick (1905–1979) was an Australian educationist. Born in North Sydney, New South Wales, Madgwick trained as a schoolteacher before attaining degrees in economics and economic history from the University of Sydney and Balliol College, Oxford. Madgwick gained experience in adult education while working as a lecturer in Sydney's extension program, and he served during World War II as Director of the Australian Army Education Service, which provided adult education services to the Army's 250,000 members. After the war, he guided the New England University College to independence as the University of New England in 1954, becoming its first Vice-Chancellor and presiding over the school's expansion of its curriculum and facilities while promoting closer ties with the local community. Madgwick was an influential proponent of adult learning and extension studies in tertiary education. In recognition of his contributions to education, Madgwick was appointed to the Order of British Empire in 1962 and knighted in 1966. After his retirement, Madgwick served from 1967 to 1973 as Chairman of the Australian Broadcasting Commission. (Full article...)

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Blackfriars Hall, established in 1994, is one of the Permanent Private Halls (PPHs) of the University of Oxford. Unlike the colleges, which are run by their Fellows, PPHs are run by an outside institution – in the case of Blackfriars Hall, the English Province of the Dominican friars. The hall is on the same site as the Priory of the Holy Spirit (the friars' religious house) and Blackfriars Studium, the Province's centre of theological studies. Dominicans arrived in Oxford in 1221 at the instruction of Saint Dominic himself, little more than a week after the friar's death. Like all the monastic houses in Oxford, Blackfriars came into conflict with the university authorities, and all of them were suppressed during the Reformation. Blackfriars was refounded in 1921 on St Giles', within 600 metres of the original site. One of the smaller academic communities in Oxford, it admits men and women (over the age of 21) of any faith for undergraduate degrees in theology, philosophy, and PPE and for postgraduate degrees. Former students include Anthony Fisher OP, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Sydney; Malcolm McMahon OP, Archbishop of Liverpool; and the American journalist Delia Gallagher. (Full article...)

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Credit: Pruneau

The Chancellor of the University of Oxford, Lord Patten of Barnes, leaves the Sheldonian Theatre after the 2009 Encaenia. He was elected in 2003, and is the latest holder of an office that dates back to the early 13th century.

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Did you know

Articles from Wikipedia's "Did You Know" archives about the university and people associated with it:

... that Seymour King, Member of Parliament for Kingston upon Hull Central for 25 years, was the first climber to reach the summits of Mont Maudit and Aiguille Blanche de Peuterey (pictured)?
... that Andrew N. Meltzoff's research revealed that infants of only a few weeks of age can imitate facial expressions and hand gestures?
... that civil engineer Robert Wynne-Edwards was the first President of the Institution of Civil Engineers to be elected while still working as a contractor?
... that Irish cricketer and artist Robert Gregory was the subject of four poems by W. B. Yeats?
... that when a rival took over an estate belonging to Sir Walter Clarges, Clarges used his position as a Member of Parliament to send the interloper to jail?